Easy Back To School Laminating with Scotch™

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #SchoolYearReady #CollectiveBias

Well folks, I survived the First Day Of School. It wasn’t easy, but I successfully got everyone out the door and to their respective schools on time and everyone seemed to have an amazing day. Well except for mama, who cried a half dozen times about having her babies grow up. A kid starting Kindergarten and a kid starting Middle School is no joke. All the feels were happening in my minivan this morning.

I did it though. {Yay me}

And now starts the fun part…… going back to work. As I have mentioned before, I am a teacher. I teach PreK 4 at the boys school and starting today I will be back to work. This week is our teacher inservice which means lesson plans, and scope and sequence and classroom decorating and organizing, and team building and more decorating and organizing.

Did I mention the decorating and organizing?

A lot goes into getting a classroom ready to welcome kiddos and with the madness of getting all my own kids ready for their schools I have to make things as easy as possible.

Last year, my sweet coworker was telling me all about this laminator that she had purchased at Walmart that was a lifesaver for her. I would come in to work with my trail of laminating that needed to be cut and she would just laugh and ask why I insisted on going to the teacher supply store and waiting {usually with 4 kids} to have it done when I could laminate from the convince of my home and/or classroom.

This summer as I was making my lists and prepping for going back to work I got to thinking about all the hours wasted and time traveling to and from the stores where I did my laminating and decided to text her about the machine she had recommended. She sent back a little smile emoji with the words “Finally” and then told me all about Easy Back To School Laminating With Scotch™ Thermal Laminator.

I would like to take last year Michelle and smack her, because why oh why did I wait so long to get this. SO much easier than carting my crew to the store and waiting and trying to lay things out and get organized while twin two year olds try and destroy it all. Now I can simply put the kiddos to bed, turn on my beloved guilty pleasure TV show (I am looking at you Bachelor In Paradise) and laminate to my hearts desire. And my hearts desires to laminate ALL. THE. THINGS. You know, in case you were wondering.

Once I got my coworkers text, I ran straight to our Walmart to buy it. We are talking from text to check out, maybe 30 minutes? I was a teacher on a mission.

I located my Scotch™ Thermal Laminator in the Home Office section, but I have also heard from a few friends who I shared this amazing life saver with that they found theirs in the Back To School seasonal section of their Walmarts. When in doubt, just ask and I am sure an employee will point you in the right direction, because trust me when I say you don’t want to go home without this in your possession.

Then, just like my children I went straight home to play with my new toy. Funny how we never seem to outgrow the excitement of new things.

While I was browsing my Walmart and picking up the supplies I needed, these Scotch™ Self Sealing laminating pouches caught my eye. I decided to pick some up because while I really was looking forward to using the Scotch™ Thermal Laminator, I figured it could be smart to keep some of the self sealing pouches in my classroom in the event of a laminating emergency. You may laugh at that, but if you are a teacher then you feel me. They are perfect for any last minute laminating needs and I have no doubt they will come in handy this year.

Once I unboxed the Scotch™ Thermal Laminator I was ready to get started. I loved that it was easy to use…seriously easiest thing EVER, just plug it in and turn on the power button and ready for it to get nice and hot. Once the little “READY” light is lit up, you are good to go.

I decided to work on the name tags for my seating charts. Truth time – I didn’t want to share any names of my students for privacy reasons, so I made name tags for the boys. No, they are not in my class. Once I had the names on the tags I simply placed them in the pouch like so…

Then I placed the pouch into the laminator sealed side first and it did the rest of the work for me. It was super quick and the end result was PERFECTION. And all from my kitchen table.

A few helpful tips for when using your laminator.

– Don’t laminate historically significant documents or a government-issued document
– Don’t laminate anything with an embellishment (googely-eyes, cheerios stuck to paper, etc).
– Do have an adult operate the machine.
– Do let the machine warm up and look for the ready light to glow.
– Do feed the item in straight, with the sealed/closed edge in first.
– Do cut the pouch AFTER you laminate, not before. Cuts before could cause jams.

Naturally when I was done with the nametags I got to work on my next project. Laminating is the perfect way to make my own wipe board activities for my entire class. I simply take worksheet activities and laminate and then my students can use dry erase markers to complete the activity and then we just wipe and reuse, wipe and reuse.